Recent political shifts to the right in many Western countries have been accompanied by attempts in the political and media domains to subvert social justice discourse and reappropriate its concepts to serve the opposite goals. This shift is especially prominent in education, where the US “leads the way”: long-established policies and practices aimed at combating racism, discrimination, and oppression and making education more accessible and inclusive have been recently curtailed. The policy change is often accompanied by a change in discourse.

One of the key examples is the reappropriation of the diversity discourse, which is now referred to as “illegal discrimination and divisive agenda”. Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have been rolled-back and often prohibited at the state and federal level. While affirmative action in higher education admissions was successfully used for several decades between early 1960s and 2023 to diversify the student body and increase the chances of students from underrepresented groups (e.g., African American and Hispanic) to attend highly selective universities, race-conscious admissions were outlawed by the US Supreme Court in 2023. Natasha Warikoo described the legal and cultural battles around affirmative action in her episode ‘Affirmative Action in the USA’ and mentions several benefits of using affirmative action. Having a more diverse student population on campus adds to diversity of perspectives, which is beneficial for a liberal democratic society at large. Affirmative action also redresses racial exclusion and allows to create a pipeline for diverse leadership that is seen as socially desirable. Now with affirmative action out of the picture, there is new data that many college campuses are becoming less diverse. Some of the universities that implemented mitigation policies built around additional financial aid managed to keep their share of African American and Hispanic students stable.

Similarly, the concept of free speech emerged during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, when university students and activists campaigned for the opportunity to express views against racial discrimination and the war in Vietnam. Their original goal was to open up the debate on campuses and allow marginalized voices to be heard. Proponents of free speech in the 2020s have a different agenda. Neal Hutchens in his episode ‘Free Speech and Academic Freedom on Campus’ highlights how some conservative speakers and commentators use the concept of free speech in higher education to be able to air anti-immigrant, White nationalist or similar exclusionary ideas on campus that mainly ignite culture wars. While there is a general agreement that universities are “battle places for ideas and values”, some scholars of free speech ask an important question of how the existing free speech standards should be balanced against the commitment to diversity and inclusivity. Universities have their educational mission to uphold and the quality of speech on campus should also contribute to this mission.

One of the most prominent concepts that is being clearly repurposed from its progressive roots to an opposing regressive meaning in the political and media discourse is “woke”. What was initially a term for being aware (“awake”) of discrimination, oppression, and inequality, now became a synonym for progressive or center-left ideas that people on the right do not like. Michael Apple in his episode ‘Trump 2.0 and Education’ provides a good example for how a conservative nonprofit organization ‘Moms for Liberty’ used anxiety among religious conservatives in the US to campaign against school curriculum materials that focus on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Moms for Liberty is one of the growing number of organizations founded in the climate of right-wing backlash against COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates, which identifies with the parental rights movement. Although there has been general consensus among parents, teachers, academics, and policymakers on the benefits of parent engagement which builds on “funds of knowledge” that all families, especially from traditionally marginalized communities, bring to school, the parental rights movement has so far mainly succeeded in banning books on racism and LGBTQ rights across many US jurisdictions. Instead of bringing more voices in, parental rights advocates silence those who have been historically excluded from conversations about curriculum, pedagogy and purposes of education.

Almost in Orwellian terms, diversity is discrimination, free speech is freedom to exclude, and awareness of inequality is division. Clear understanding of how the right-wing politicians and conservative commentators reappropriate social justice discourse is the first step in fighting back.

March 3, 2025